Developer(s): Polyphony DigitalPublisher(s): SCEI (JP, AS, KO), SCEA (US), SCEE (EU)Genre: RacingWikipedia: [shttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Turismo_4 Link]Game review links: Metacritic: 89/100Game description: With authentic cars, courses, and car physics, Gran Turismo 4 adds an even more realistic racing simulation to the series. The characteristics of each car take into account weight, speed, friction, and more to deliver realistic handling. Test-drive new vehicles in courses located in various sites, such as Nurburgring Nordschleife, New York City, the Grand Canyon, and Tsukuba Circuit. Along with Career mode, Gran Turismo 4 highlights the new GT Photo mode and GT Online mode, which lets players around the world compete over the Internet.
Gran Turismo 4 is the fourth game in the Gran Turismo series. It features over 700 vehicles, 51 tracks, B-Spec mode, Photo mode, and 1080i support. This game was released on February 22, 2005 to critical acclaim.

BIOS v2.00, Game runs fine at 5x Native resolution. Some slight hiccups/slowdown in the menus. One weird glitch I saw was on dirt tracks, the plumes of dirt seem to be transparent and can be seen through hills and can be seen coming out of the middle of the back of the car. Still use recommended hacks for maximum performance.

Runs above full speed. Needed to set EE clamping mode manually to full so the text that says the time between you and the first car to display correctly. Looks like this needs to be added to game fixes GameIndex.dbf so it can auto change the EE clamping mode to full. Some rare random slowdowns that happened randomly in the races, no specific reason but in last less than a second. Other than that the game works perfect.

All other graphic options are default. Game runs smoother than on the real PS2. Besides problem with licence test crashing everything works perfect. I did notice licence test uses way more RAM than actual races, and I crashed when I ran out of RAM in certain tests. Other than that it's perfect. (at 4x native with MSAA and AF enabled, I'm peaking at 10+ GB of RAM usage)

On some menus, a minor slowdown occurs (ca. 2–4 FPS). On normal racetracks, FPS stays around 50 (PAL), but on more graphically-intensive tracks like street circuits, slowdowns can be slight (ca. 5–18 FPS) on Single Race / 2-players mode. On Time-trials, minor slowdown may occur on tracks like that (ca. 2–5 FPS). On Software-mode: Usually about 10 FPS slower than hardware-rendering (with 4 threads). Other bugs: a red flash occur at every race start, but shade boost tones it down. Lower edges on menus may have white lines.

Only problem is that in a race it is too slow (20-30 FPS) and the game doesn't work with frame skipping. With hardware video acceleration enabled in GSdx, it is twice as slow. The problem seems to be the CPU.

Hacks and Performance

The MTVU hack may increase speed in quad core CPUs. This varies in dual-core CPUs as it may increase depending on the race but may cause slowdown in others.

Other hacks can cause crashes or the game won't boot. This game requires a ton of personal tinkering to get it to run decent.This game also has very, VERY high system requirements (expect to use at least an i5 or an FX 6300 above). Don't expect a smooth or stable game. Slowdowns are heavy and very prevalent. It mostly depends on track, the lighting and the amount of cars on screen.

EE Cyclerate can give speedup during the races, but may also cause slowdown to the track-selection screens where videos are shown at the background.

The "Allow 8-bit textures" in GSdx may help with speed a bit more and maybe reduce the VRAM slowdowns.

If you are using software mode and have 4 cores or more (this includes hyperthreaded cores, as PCSX2 takes advantage of this), set the "extra software threads" to the amount of total threads in your CPU minus one (4 cores, threads to "3", 8 cores, threads to "7", etc.). This can provide a noticeable speedup in any game running in software mode, but beware that only native resolution can be used.

Trivia

Known Issues

Heavy crashing

Description: Crashes pretty often. This happens because of spikes in VRAM use.

Workaround:

In recent PCSX2 GIT revisions as of May 7th, 2016, VRAM spikes have been greatly reduced.

If you get lots of crashes during license tests use a lower internal resolution in GSdx.

Multisample anti-aliasing(MSAA) can cause the game to crash a lot. Make sure the MSAA level is set to 0 in the GSdx Configure Hacks menu(only applies to Direct3D HW renderers).

In Windows XP, even in native resolution, you may get instant crashes when starting races if you do not have enough VRAM. Using a custom resolution lower than 512x512 seems to help.

First letter missing in menus

Type: Note (not an issue)

Description: The first letter of a sentence is missing in menus.

Workaround: Set VU Clamping Mode to "Extra" to fix.

Demo races do not work

Type: Note (not an issue)

Description: Demonstrations return back to the menu as soon as they start.

Workaround: Demonstration races will only work with EE clamping set to full.

Fixed Issues

Game doesn't load past copyright screen.

Status:Fixed

Type: Major

Description: Due to dual layer issues the game might not load past the copyright screen.

Workaround: Has been fixed as of git version v1.5.0-dev-460-gc829826 of 16 march 2016. For older versions use patch supplied at the compatibility list on the forums(see bottom of the page for links). Though this will disable all ingame video's(including the background of the main menu).

Improper interlacing

Photo mode is broken

Status:Fixed

Type: Serious

Description: In hardware modes, garbage replaces the area in which the photo is displayed.

Workaround: This has been fixed in 1.5.0 developer versions if Renderer(in Config > Video(GS) > Plugin Settings menu) is set to "OpenGL (Hardware)". For Direct3D renderers switch to software mode while moving the cameras, then switch back to hardware when you take the picture.

Garbage all over screen in races

Status:Fixed

Type: Serious

Description: Happens when using color/brightness options other than 0.

Workaround:

This has been fixed if Renderer(in Config > Video(GS) > Plugin Settings menu) is set to "OpenGL (Hardware)" and CRC Hack Level is set to "Partial (OpenGL Recommended)" in recent GIT revisions as of May 2016.

For older versions: To fix the garbage and crashing during races, set the brightness to 0 in options.

For older NTSC versions: Change the display in game config to "Normal", then you can set the brightness to 5 without the broken graphics and also have a correct image.